Insubstantial as a Breath
by Michelle Birkby
Summary: Set in season 7, after Grace. Sam starts to think about her past and future with jack
1. Default Chapter

//////// indicates flashbacks  
  
"What a surprise, who could foresee,   
  
I could come to feel about you what you felt about me  
  
Why only now when I can see you're drifting away"  
  
Send in the Clowns, Stephen Sondheim.  
  
*************.  
  
I don't know how I'd lost the certainty that he loved me.  
  
Once I knew. Once I was so sure. So certain. Back then, before.  
  
Why am I thinking of this now? Normally, thoughts about him are pushed right to the back of my mind, deeply hidden, and my life's hectic enough and busy enough to forget those little niggling questions. But then, barely a week ago, there were those hallucinations, questioning me, questioning everything about me, making me think and reveal things to myself I'd hoped were forgotten, and there he was, in my mind, gentle and tender and loving, and letting me go, whether I wanted to be let go of or not.  
  
And now....  
  
We're on a Gou'ald ship. Again. It's empty, probably. Badly damaged. At some point they put up the inner shields across all the corridors, but the control room was badly damaged, and half the shields came down. The problem is, we don't know which shields are up until we actually walk into them, and we need to be able to search the whole ship.  
  
Daniel decided not to wait, and wandered off ten minutes ago. Jack...the Colonel, followed him, impatient, muttering something unflattering to Daniel under his breath, and calling over his shoulder to me to 'get the rest of these damn shields down!'  
  
Good, an order. Something I can cope with. Because ever since I came off the Prometheus, my mind's been buzzing with what he thinks and feels, what does he mean, does he still love me, no, of course not, did he ever.  
  
So, I bent down to the control, fiddling with the crystals, gently sliding them in and out and rearranging them, watching the lights flicker and dance across the display. I looked up for a second to see Teal'c across the room reach out and brush one of the shields, so gently, but it was enough.  
  
Those delicate blue lines sprang across the gap, blocking him. Such a flimsy, delicate barrier. It seems as insubstantial as a breath, but it separated me and Jack as effectively as a six foot brick wall.  
  
Except, of course, you can't see the face of a man who's about to die for you on the other side of a brick wall.  
  
And seeing it, that shield again, suddenly I'm back there, back on that ship back when I knew for certain....  
  
//////There's no way out, there's no way out, he has to leave, he'll die if he doesn't, I know he has this thing about no-one being left behind, but this is the only way. I might survive. He has to go.  
  
"Sir, please...."  
  
"No!"  
  
Oh my God. It's there, in his face.  
  
He loves me.  
  
I hadn't known. Perhaps I'd suspected. Sometimes I even daydreamed. But I'm a scientist, and scientists require cold hard facts, an actual statement of truth, not theory and feelings, neither proved nor disproved. But it's obvious now as if he'd screamed it.  
  
He loves me.  
  
It's all there in his face, and how I can not respond? All I can see is that he's going to die for me, oh God, I can hear the Jaffa coming, and this is one hell of a way for all those secret little daydreams to come true, and oh God, I don't want him to die, I want him to live, but I need him here, and I can here the end coming and all I can see is the naked love in his eyes, and I know, with absolute certainty, that he could never live if I died.////////  
  
Teal'c glances over for a moment, and asks me courteously if there is a problem. I'm frozen, staring at the blue spider's web that dissipating behind him. Teal'c voice is calm, understanding, and free of judgement, and for a second I think about confiding in him 'No Teal'c, I'm not all right, I thought Jack loved me, and now I'm not so sure, and now all I know is that I love him, and for God's sake, when did things get turned around like this, and what do I do?'. I've no doubt Teal'c would be very calm, and very comforting, it's me who would condemn myself for saying all that. For God's sake, I sound like one of those women in those soap operas Janet and I like to make fun of and secretly love. I'm not Samantha. I'm Carter, Major Carter, SG1's scientist, and I have to remember that. I chose this way, and I'll be damned if I give up now. So I ask Teal'c to come over and help me, so at least he won't get that barrier going again, and remind me what I've lost.  
  
**************** 


	2. Chapter 2

//////////  
  
"Sir, none of this has to leave this room."  
  
And none of it should. Whatever we felt..he felt..it's against regulations. it could mean the end of both our careers. It could mean the end of SG1, and I couldn't bear it.  
  
And I can't bear to see him like this, so vulnerable, so stripped of the Colonel, just plain Jack, in love with a woman he's not certain loves him. I never knew that underneath it all he could be so easily hurt. It's too much for me. I can't bear to see that much emotion, and I can't cope with it. I want my old, battle-hardened, joking, carefree, Colonel back again.  
  
"And we're ok with that?"  
  
Why wouldn't we be? I want it that way. I don't my emotions involved. I want to remain calm. I have to remain detached. I can't...I can't take the risk. I can't love someone as much as I loved my mother, and lose them..and I could so easily lose him.  
  
So yes, it stays in the room. And I'll get over my little crush. It's just a crush. And I haven't lost a friend, and I haven't lost my commanding officer, and I haven't lost my tight control over my emotions....///////  
  
I told him to keep it in the room. And he did. I don't think he's even called me Sam since then. And the little touches have lessened, and if he's ever looked at me with love in his eyes, I haven't seen it and now that I'm no longer there, in that moment, I can see that he would have done the same if it had been Daniel or Teal'c behind the barrier...no-one gets left behind, whether it's me or not.  
  
And I was happy. Well, content. I worked well. I was surrounded by my friends. And my emotions, my wild turbulent emotions were safely locked away, where no-one, least of all me could get at them.  
  
And then Daniel died. And I looked to Jack to help me, to grieve himself so I could comfort him, to stop me being so alone. But he stepped away. I knew he was doing it for my own good, but still, it hurt. And then came Nirrti, and I thought I would die, and as I felt my cells separating I leaned on his shoulder, and gave up my defences with a little sigh, and let down my guard, and loved him.  
  
And I waited ever since for one sign from him, for him to say he loves me, in words, because I am a scientist, and I must have proof, for him to ask me fishing, do something, say something, and yet I was terrified he would because how I would deal with the brave new world that would open up.  
  
But he didn't say a thing, and everything went back to normal, and I realised, I knew, that given the absence of all the evidence pointing towards him loving me, the reverse hypothesis must be true, and he'd stopped loving me.  
  
"Damn!" My hands slips inside the control panel, and I cut myself badly on one of the cut crystals.   
  
"Major Carter, are you alright?" Teal'c asks, concerned, and he pulls out my hand, and wipes the blood away.  
  
"Well, at least I found the problem." I say.  
  
"The flaw is very deeply hidden. I do not believe you have finished this work." He says, and I look up at him, and for a moment, it's like we having a separate conversation, about what I was thinking, not what I was doing.  
  
"Did you fix it?" The Colonel calls, as he returns, and I wish I could stop my stomach doing a little lurch as he walks into the room.  
  
"Not yet, we'll have to take it apart."  
  
"Well, we've got all day. Did you hurt yourself?"  
  
"It's not much."   
  
He turns away, and I know there was a time when he would have come over, examined the cut, bandaged it, and I also know I stopped that part of him.   
  
I have to get over this. I have to move on. Anything, anyone to help me move on from the sudden raw ache in myself. This feeling that I've lost the better part of me when I told him to keep it in that room. I would do anything now to open up that door again, and let him love me, but I'm the one that stopped it . I'm the one to blame.  
  
I stopped him loving me.  
  
JACK.  
  
Jack. She actually called me Jack for the first time, and it was her, not a Gou'ald or an alternate version, it was her.  
  
I wish she'd call me Jack again.  
  
Dammit, I still love her.  
  
I've never been able to leave it in that room. 


End file.
